It's no secret that videos are one of the most effective ways to connect with your audience. Video content can help build trust with potential customers or clients while educating them on some aspect of what you do.
This episode's guest Kan Huang takes us through the types of videos that will benefit your business in different ways. Listen in, discover, and plan to expand your video repertoire.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 32:38 — 30.0MB)
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In the podcast:
03:47 – The story of how it all started. Nothing like a bit of backstory to create interest.
05:47 – Why go with our brand? Give people a reason to choose you.
08:39 – Get it all explained to you. Be educational AND engaging.
10:55 – The proof is in the videos. Let your customers tell people how good you are.
12:00 – Here’s how to warm up your prospect. This is a great preface to a sale or consult.
12:41 – Populate your podcast with these videos. Take your content further by opting for video over purely audio.
13:39 – Where to send people for answers. Make your life easier with this type of video.
15:33 – What makes this better than what’s out there? Video lends itself well to making comparisons.
17:13 – This is how it works… It’s the closest thing many people can get these days to a test drive.
19:26 – An engaging medium for your sales copy. A sales letter you can watch? Yes, please.
21:52 – Making it short and personalized. People will love you for going to the trouble.
24:59 – But wait, there’s more… James springs a cheeky bonus item on Kan.
Put together effective business strategies with James’s help
You need to be using videos in your business. Mobile video consumption has doubled almost every year for the last five or six years. If you’re not already using video content, it’s time to get on the trend.
“Mobile video consumption has doubled almost every year for the last five or six years.”
Today’s guest, Kan Huang of Social Wave, is here to discuss 11 types of videos that you would do very well to have in your business.
1. The origin story
Storytelling resonates, and is a great way to stand out among your competitors, says Kan. He recommends sharing the story of where your business or product started, as you would to a friend who asked you how it all came about. This tends to work well as a starting point for videos.
“Storytelling always resonates the best.”
What the origin story does is it connects with your audience and builds a relationship with them. And it differentiates you, gives you a face amidst the other practitioners in your industry.
2. Why choose us?
Number two is somewhat similar to the origin story in that, again, it differentiates you from the competition. This, however, is more a showcasing of the features and benefits of your product or service. In a market where things have become very homogenized over time, such as in ecommerce, it can really help prospects with their buying decision.
3. Explainer videos
Kan and his team spend a lot of time on explainer videos for their clients. They look at and address things like the pain points customers are experiencing. It creates great content, with the aim to deliver value.
Explainer videos help people learn new things that enable them to make decisions, and they can really help build a relationship with your audience.
Take, for instance, an accountant whose client needs to decide between a sole trader versus a limited liability company. An explainer video can let the client come to the decision-making much more educated, more nurtured, and easier to convert.
4. Case studies / customer testimonials
Talking too much about your own greatness can turn off potential clients. It’s much better to let satisfied customers share their stories and the results they’ve gotten in a case study. Marketers like Peng Joon and Russel Brunson have landing pages loaded with video case studies and testimonials. It really drives social proof and improves conversions across the board.
5. Nurturing sequence videos
These videos can be used in combination with emails to warm up your prospect and prep them for buying your product, or for an upcoming consult with you. Brief them on things they should consider before a call, or give them material to check out, to learn something more about what you do.
6. Podcast videos
If you have your own podcast and are going to record anyway, says Kan, you’d be crazy not to consider videos. Videos give you a repurposing power other mediums don’t. Video podcasts can be turned into shorter videos and placed on YouTube and social media, as James does with his video episodes.
7. Frequently asked questions
Anyone running a business has experienced being asked the same questions over and over. So why not make a video answering those common queries, and send people to them?
James is great at this, as members like Kan know. James can still recall Joe Polish at Underground Four waving a flip cam and urging people to record, record everything so you can leverage it.
You can use FAQ videos if you’re a bookkeeper, a service professional of any type, if you sell physical things, or if you have a membership.
8. Comparison videos
SaaS companies do this well, putting out amazing videos around choosing between them versus the alternatives in their space. One thing you have to be careful of when doing this is not to be defamatory, or not to show the competition in a negative light.
The great thing about putting it in video is, people these days on the internet have a very short attention span. So videos tend to help with consuming knowledge and information really quickly.
James has a surfboard review website, and some of the content they have is comparative, choice A versus choice B videos.
9. Demo
Demo or product showcase videos work well for products or services that are complex, or that compete with a lot of similar products. They can be on your homepage or on your product page, basically a reel that simplifies your product and how it works.
If your product or service is something rather boring, video tends to make things a lot more exciting and engaging. Kan’s team, for instance, is currently putting together a product showcase to explain how a tax depreciation schedule works, for a quantity surveyor client.
A demo reel is like the test drives James used to give at Mercedes-Benz. It can not just showcase how a product works, but give some idea of how it feels to use it.
10. VSL (video sales letter)
Long form sales copy still has its place. But Kan and his team are finding more and more now that video is a fantastic way of communicating value, because people just again prefer that format. It’s a very digestible medium, and great for converting people on landing pages.
James is a big fan of the VSL, and people like Pat Flynn are terrific at it.
11. Loom / personal short videos
James has been making a lot of use lately of Loom, sending simple personalized videos to clients and prospective buyers. It makes an impression when you can follow up with people using Loom or Bonjoro. They’re uncanned messages that build a relationship by showing you do the manual work, stuff that isn’t scalable.
12. Documentary
Kan has been generous with his list, so James is chipping in with a bonus item: docos. He’s arranged documentaries in the past for an injury lawyer and a motor dealer, both in somewhat boring industries. And they’ve been great at creating engagement and excitement for their audiences.
A documentary is a combo of other video types – you can put your origin story in it, your why choose us, a case study or two. You can demo a product, or use a documentary as a video sales letter.
For about eight years, James had a documentary on his SilverCircle homepage. It was a case study of someone making $30K a month, who with James’s help ramped it up to $300,000 a month. It was in black and white, a work of art, and not salesy, which is another thing to love about documentaries.
“A documentary is one of the most powerful videos you could ever put into your armory.”
So while a documentary may not be essential, it’s one of the most powerful videos you could ever put into your armory.
Wrapping up
For anyone listening who has yet to use video, has Kan got any overall tips? James knows someone will be asking, what camera should I use? Luckily, Kan has created an FAQ video just to address that.
But for those looking to do videos, a place to start, besides the equipment, has a lot to do with understanding your audience’s journey as a buyer. Where are they at? What do they need to know? The different types of videos discussed here help harness different parts of that buyer’s journey.
So think about where people are consuming information to choose your product or your service. And what sort of videos can you create, to help move them along that journey?
“Different types of videos help harness different parts of the buyer’s journey.”
If you need help, Kan is more than happy to provide. You can email him, [email protected], or check out his site, SocialWave.com.au.
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